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THE BUSY LIFE OF Eighty-Five Years OF EZRA MEEKER
THE BUSY LIFE OF Eighty-Five Years OF EZRA MEEKER
VENTURES AND ADVENTURES Sixty-three years of Pioneer Life in the Old Oregon Country; An Account of the Author's Trip Across the Plains with an Ox Team, 1852; Return Trip, 1906-7; His Cruise on Puget Sound, 1853; Trip Through the Natchess Pass, 1854; Over the Chilcoot Pass; Flat-boating on the Yukon, 1898. THE OREGON TRAIL AUTHOR OF PIONEER "REMINISCENCES OF PUGET SOUND"—"THE TRAGEDY OF LESCHI"—"HOP CULTURE IN THE UNITED STATES"—"WASHINGTON TERRITORY WEST OF THE CASCADE MOUNTAINS"—"THE OX TEAM"—"
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PREFACE
PREFACE
Just why I should write a preface I know not, except that it is fashionable to do so, and yet in the present case there would seem a little explanation due the reader, who may cast his eye on the first chapter of this work. Indeed, the chapter, "Early Days in Indiana," may properly be termed an introduction, though quite intimately connected with the narrative that follows, yet not necessary to make a completed story of the trip to Oregon in the early fifties. The enlarged scope of this work, na
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GREETINGS
GREETINGS
Upon this, my 85th birthday with good health remaining with me and strength to prompt the will to do, small wonder that I should arise with thankfulness in my heart for the many, many blessings vouchsafed to me. To my friends (and enemies, if I have any) I dedicate this volume, to be known as "Eighty-five Years of a Busy Life," in the hope of cementing closer companionship and mutual good will to the end, that by looking back into earlier life, we may be guided to better ways in the vista of yea
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CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER I.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY. I was born near Huntsville, Butler County, Ohio, about ten miles east of Hamilton, Ohio. This, to me, important event occurred on December 29, A. D. 1830, hence I am many years past the usual limit of three score years and ten. My father's ancestors came from England in 1637 and in 1665 settled near Elizabeth City, New Jersey, built a very substantial house which is still preserved, furnished more than a score of hardy soldiers in the War of Independence, and were noted for their
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CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER II.
CHILDHOOD DAYS. My mother said I was "always the busiest young'en she ever saw," which meant I was restless from the beginning—born so. According to the best information obtainable, I was born in a log cabin, where the fireplace was nearly as wide as the cabin. The two doors on opposite sides admitted the horse, dragging the backlog, to enter in one, and go out at the other, and of course the solid puncheon floor defied injury from rough treatment. The crane swung to and fro to regulate the bubb
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CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER III.
EARLY DAYS IN INDIANA. In the early '50's, out four and a half and seven miles, respectively, from Indianapolis, Indiana, there lived two young people with their parents, who were old-time farmers of the old style, keeping no "hired man" nor buying many "store goods." The girl could spin and weave, make delicious butter, knit soft, good shapen socks, and cook as good a meal as any other country girl around about, and was, withal, as buxom a lass as had ever been "born and raised there (Indiana)
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CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER IV.
OFF FOR OREGON. I have been asked hundreds of times how many wagons were in the train I traveled with, and what train it was, and who was the captain?—assuming that, of course, we must have been with some train. I have invariably answered, one train, one wagon, and that we had no captain. What I meant by one train is, that I looked upon the whole emigration, strung out on the plains five hundred miles, as one train. For long distances the throng was so great that the road was literally filled wi
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CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER V.
CROSSING THE MISSOURI. "What on earth is that?" exclaimed Margaret McAuley, as we approached the ferry landing a few miles below where Omaha now stands. "It looks for all the world like a great big white flatiron," answered Eliza, the sister, "doesn't it, Mrs. Meeker?" But, leaving the women folks to their similes, we drivers turned our attention more to the teams as we encountered the roads "cut all to pieces" on account of the concentrated travel as we neared the landing and the solid phalanx
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CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VII.
OUT ON THE PLAINS—BUFFALO STAMPEDE. The buffalo trails generally followed the water courses or paralleled them, while again they would lead across the country with scarcely any deviation from a direct course. When on the road a herd would persistently follow their leader, whether in the wild tumult of a stampede or the more leisurely grazing as they traveled. However, for nearly a thousand miles a goodly supply of fresh meat was obtainable from the adventurous hunters, who in spite of the appall
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CHAPTER X.
CHAPTER X.
THE ARRIVAL. About nine o'clock at night, with a bright moon shining, on October 1st, 1852, I carried my wife in my arms up the steep bank of the Willamette River, and three blocks away in the town of Portland to a colored man's lodging house. "Why, suh, I didn't think yuse could do that, yuse don't look it," said my colored friend, as I deposited my charge in the nice, clean bed in a cozy little room. From April until October, we had been on the move in the tented field, with never a roof over
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CHAPTER XI.
CHAPTER XI.
THE FIRST CABIN. What a charm the words our first cabin have to the pioneer. To many, it was the first home ever owned by them, while to many others, like myself, the first we ever had. We had been married nearly two years, yet this was really our first abiding place. All others had been merely way stations on the march westward from Indianapolis to this cabin. Built of small, straight logs, on a side hill, with the door in the end fronting the river, and with but little grading, for the rocky n
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CHAPTER XII.
CHAPTER XII.
CRUISE ON PUGET SOUND. Put yourself in my place, reader, for a time—long enough to read this chapter. Think of yourself as young again, if elderly (I will not say old); play you have been old and now young again, until you find out about this trip on Puget Sound fifty and more years ago. Then think of Puget Sound in an inquiring mood, as though you knew nothing about it, only a little indefinite hear-say; enough to know there is such a name, but not what manner of place or how large or how small
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CHAPTER XIII.
CHAPTER XIII.
CRUISE ON PUGET SOUND. "Keep to the right, as the law directs," is an old western adage that governs travelers on the road, but we kept to the right because we wanted to follow the shore as we thought it safer, and besides, why not go that way as well as any other,—it was all new to us. So, on the second morning, as we rounded Johnson's Point and saw no channel opening in any direction; saw only water in the foreground and timber beyond, we concluded to skirt the coast line and see what the day
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CHAPTER XV.
CHAPTER XV.
CRUISE ON PUGET SOUND. As we drew off on the tide from the mouth of the Puyallup River, numerous parties of Indians were in sight, some trolling for salmon, with a lone Indian in the bow of his canoe, others with a pole with barbs on two sides fishing for smelt, and used in place of a paddle, while again, others with nets, all leisurely pursuing their calling, or more accurately speaking, seemed waiting for a fisherman's luck. Again, other parties were passing, singing a plaintive ditty in minor
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CHAPTER XVI.
CHAPTER XVI.
CRUISE ON PUGET SOUND. This camp did not prove so dreary as the last one, though more exposed to the swell of the big waters to the north, and sweep of the wind. To the north we had a view of thirty miles or more, where the horizon and water blend, leaving one in doubt whether land was in sight or not, though as we afterwards ascertained, our vision could reach the famous San Juan Island, later the bone of contention between our Government and Great Britain. Port Townsend lay some ten miles nort
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CHAPTER XVII.
CHAPTER XVII.
FROM COLUMBIA RIVER TO PUGET SOUND. "Can I get home tonight?" I asked myself, while the sun was yet high one afternoon of the last week of June (1853). I was well up river, on the left bank of the Cowlitz. I could not tell how far, for there were no milestones, or way places to break the monotony of the crooked, half obstructed trail leading down stream. I knew that at the best it would be a race with the sun, for there were many miles between me and the cabin, but the days were long, and the tw
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CHAPTER XXI.
CHAPTER XXI.
TRIP THROUGH THE NATCHESS PASS—[CONTINUED.] Readers of previous chapters will remember the lonely camp mentioned and the steep mountain ahead of it to reach the summit. What with the sweat incident to the day's travel, the chill air of an October night in the mountains, with but half a three-point blanket as covering and the ground for a mattress, small wonder my muscles were a little stiffened when I arose and prepared for the ascent to the summit. Bobby had, as I have said, been restless durin
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CHAPTER XXII.
CHAPTER XXII.
TRIP THROUGH THE NATCHESS PASS—[CONTINUED.] The start for the high table desert lands bordering the Yakima Valley cut me loose from all communication, for no more immigrants were met until I reached the main traveled route beyond the Columbia River. I speak of the "desert lands" adjacent to the Yakima from the standpoint of that day. We all thought these lands were worthless, as well as the valley, not dreaming of the untold wealth the touch of water would bring out. The road lay through a forbi
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CHAPTER XXIX.
CHAPTER XXIX.
THE FRASER RIVER STAMPEDE. On the 21st day of March, 1858, the schooner Wild Pidgeon arrived at Steilacoom and brought the news that the Indians had discovered gold on Fraser River; had traded several pounds of the precious metal with the Hudson Bay Company, and that three hundred people had left Victoria and vicinity for the new eldorado. And, further, the report ran, the mines were exceedingly rich. The next day there came further reports from the north, that the Bellingham Bay Company's coal
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CHAPTER XXXI.
CHAPTER XXXI.
A CHAPTER ON NAMES. In the latter part of the seventeenth century that intrepid American traveler, Jonathan Carver, wrote these immortal words: "From the intelligence I gained from the Naudowessie Indians, among whom I arrived on the 7th of December (1776), and whose language I perfectly acquired during a residence of five months, and also from the accounts I afterwards obtained from the Assinipoils, who speak the same tongue, being a revolted band of the Naudowessies; and from the Killistinoes,
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CHAPTER XXXII.
CHAPTER XXXII.
PIONEER RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCES AND INCIDENTS. If we were to confine the word religion to its strict construction as to meaning, we would cut off the pioneer actions under this heading to a great extent; but, if we will think of the definition as applied to morality, the duties of man to man, to character building—then the field is rich. Many of the pioneers, necessarily cut loose from church organizations, were not eager to enter again into their old affiliations, though their conduct showed a tr
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CHAPTER XXXIII.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
WILD ANIMALS. I will write this chapter for the youngsters and the elderly wise-heads who wear specs may turn over the leaves without reading it, if they choose. Wild animals in early days were very much more plentiful than now, particularly deer and black bear. The black bear troubled us a good deal and would come near the houses and kill our pigs; but it did not take many years to thin them out. They were very cowardly and would run away from us in the thick brush except when the young cubs we
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CHAPTER XXXIV.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
THE MORNING SCHOOL. Soon after the Indian war we moved to our donation claim. We had but three neighbors, the nearest nearly two miles away, and two of them kept bachelor's hall and were of no account for schools. Of course, we could not see any of our neighbors' houses, and could reach but one by a road and the others by a trail. Under such conditions we could not have a public school. I can best tell about our morning school by relating an incident that happened a few months after it was start
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CHAPTER XXXVI.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
I come now to a period of my life, as one might say, on the border land between pioneer days of the old Oregon country and of the later development of the younger territory and this giant State bearing the great name of the father of our country. An account of these ventures follows in the order of their occurrence. MY HOP VENTURE. The public, generally, give me the credit of introducing hop culture into the Northwest. As this business created such a stir in the world's market, and made the Puya
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CHAPTER XXXVII.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
THE BEET SUGAR VENTURE. A more proper heading, I think, would be "Sugar Beet Raising," but everybody at the time spoke of it the other way, and so it shall be. I did raise hundreds of tons of sugar beets, and fed them to the dairy, but had only enough of them manufactured to get half a ton of sugar, which was exhibited at the New Orleans exposition—the second year of the exposition—and probably the first sugar ever made from Washington grown beets. The first winter I spent on the London hop mark
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CHAPTER XXXIX.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
BANKING. My connection with the banking business in Puyallup was neither a venture nor an adventure, in the common acceptance of the meaning of these words, and to this day I can scarcely account for my action. I am sure that I was not "cut out" for a banker, and the business had no attraction for me. I did want to see a national bank established in Puyallup, and so took $10,000.00 of the stock, became a member of the directory, and committed the grave indiscretion of letting others "run the ban
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CHAPTER XLI.
CHAPTER XLI.
THE OX. The ox is passing; in fact, has passed. Like the old-time spinning-wheel and the hand loom, that are only to be seen as mementos of the past, or the quaint old cobbler's bench with its hand-made lasts and shoe pegs, or the heavy iron bubbling mush pots on the crane in the chimney corner; like the fast vanishing of the old-time men and women of sixty years or more ago—all are passing, to be laid aside for the new ways, and the new actors on the scenes of life. While these ways and these s
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CHAPTER XLIV.
CHAPTER XLIV.
OLD FORT BOISE. Erecting a monument in Vale, as related in the last chapter, finished the work in Oregon, as we soon crossed Snake River just below the mouth of Boise, and were landed on the historic spot of Old Fort Boise, established by the Hudson Bay Company in September, 1834. This fort was established for the purpose of preventing the success of the American venture at Fort Hall, a post established earlier in 1834 by Nathaniel J. Wyethe. Wyethe's venture proved disastrous, and the fort soon
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CHAPTER XLV.
CHAPTER XLV.
THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. From Cokeville to Pacific Springs, just west of the summit, of the Rocky Mountains at South Pass, by the road and trail we traveled, is 158 miles. Ninety miles of this stretch is away from the sound of the locomotive, the click of the telegraph or the hello girl. It is a great extension of that grand mountain range, the Rockies, from six to seven thousand feet above sea level, with scant vegetable growth, and almost a solitude as to habitation, save as here and there a sheep
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CHAPTER XLVII.
CHAPTER XLVII.
FORT LARAMIE, WYOMING. I quote from my journal: "Camp No. 99, July 16, Fort Laramie, odometer 1,247.—From the time we crossed the Missouri in May, 1852, until we arrived opposite this place on the north bank of the Platte, no place or name was so universally in the minds of the emigrants as old Fort Laramie; here, we eagerly looked for letters that never came—maybe our friends and relatives had not written; maybe they had and the letter lost or dumped somewhere in 'The States'; but now all hope
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CHAPTER XLVIII.
CHAPTER XLVIII.
DEATH OF TWIST. "Old Oregon Trail Monument Expedition, Brady Island, Nebraska, August 9, 1906, Camp No. 120, odometer, 1,536⅝.—Yesterday morning Twist ate his grain as usual and showed no signs of sickness until we were on the road two or three miles, when he began to put his tongue out and his breathing became heavy. But he leaned on the yoke heavier than usual and seemed determined to pull the whole load. I finally stopped, put him on the off side, gave him the long end of the yoke, and tied h
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CHAPTER XLIX.
CHAPTER XLIX.
KEARNEY, NEBRASKA. At that beautiful city of Kearney we were accorded a fine camping place in the center of the town under the spreading boughs of the shade trees that line the streets, and a nice green, fresh-cut sward upon which to pitch our tents. The people came in great numbers to visit the camp and express their approval as to the object of the trip. I said, "Here we will surely get a splendid monument," but when I came to consult with the business men not one could be found to give up any
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CHAPTER LI.
CHAPTER LI.
THE RETURN TRIP. I left Washington on the 8th of January, 1908, and shipped the outfit over the Alleghany Mountains to McKeesport, Pennsylvania, having been in Washington, as the reader will note, thirty-nine days. From McKeesport I drove to Pittsburg and there put the team into winter quarters to remain until the 5th of March; thence shipped by boat on the Ohio River to Cincinnati, Ohio, stopping in that city but one day, and from there shipping by rail to St. Louis, Missouri. At Pittsburg and
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CHAPTER LII.
CHAPTER LII.
THE END. Now that the trip has been made, and an account of stock, so to speak, taken, I have become surprised the work was undertaken. Not that I regret the act any more than I regret the first act of crossing the Plains in 1852, which to me now appears to be as incomprehensible as the later act. If one questions the motive prompting and governing the movements of the early pioneers, scarcely two of the survivors will tell the same story, or give the same reason. This wonderful movement was bro
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CHAPTER LIII.
CHAPTER LIII.
THE INTERIM AND SECOND TRIP. The preceding chapter, "The End", was written more than eight years ago. Readers will have noted the work of monumenting the Oregon Trail was left unfinished, that only a beginning had been made, that the seed had been planted from which greater results might reasonably have been expected to follow; that though in one sense the work had failed, nevertheless the effort had been fully justified by the results obtained. A great change has come over the minds of the Amer
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CHAPTER LVII.
CHAPTER LVII.
SKETCHES OF WESTERN LIFE. "Occidental, Transcontinental, Oriental" McDonald. In the early fifties of the 19th century, there appeared on the waters of Puget Sound an eccentric character answering to the name of Joe Lane McDonald. He was a corpulent man of low stature, short bowlegs, a fat neck, a "pug" bulldog nose, with small but very piercing eyes and withal a high forehead that otherwise softened the first unfavorable impression of him. The writer is relating personal observations of this uni
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CHAPTER LVIII.
CHAPTER LVIII.
SKETCHES OF WESTERN LIFE. " The Prairie Schooner. " Just why the prairie schooner wagon body was built boat shape I have never been able to tell or see anybody else that could. That shape came in very handy when we crossed the plains in the early days, with which to cross the rivers, but we had the same kind on the farm in Indiana, where we had no thought to use them as a boat. Their real history is, this type of wagon was introduced from England, and for a century this form was used because tho
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CHAPTER LIX.
CHAPTER LIX.
HIGH COST OF LIVING. I am going to tell you the story of a public market of Cincinnati, Ohio, nearly a hundred years ago, or more accurately speaking of incidents in which the farmer dispensed with the service of middlemen; where the producer and the consumer met and dealt face to face upon the sidewalks of that embryo city in the long ago. I am reminded of the incidents referred to by a stroll through the public markets of Seattle. The "middleman", those who bought of the producer and sold to c
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CHAPTER LX.
CHAPTER LX.
THE COST OF HIGH LIVING. On the 16th day of December, 1873, the last spike was driven to complete the Northern Pacific Railway between Kalama and Tacoma. This was then, and is yet, considered a great event in the history of the Northwest country, not because of completing railroad connection between the two towns, but because of the binding together with bands of steel the two great arteries of traffic, the Columbia River and Puget Sound. Kalama, situated on the right bank of the Columbia forty
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CHAPTER LXI.
CHAPTER LXI.
PREPAREDNESS. In the eighty-five years of a busy life I have witnessed five wars in which this nation has been a party, not counting the numerous Indian wars. One of these, the Mexican war of 1846, was clearly a war of conquest, brought on by the discordant element of the slave power, then so dominant and I may say domineering in our councils. Then followed the dreadful War of the Rebellion to settle the question whether the United States was a nation or a loose confederation of States. I am one
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CHAPTER LXII.
CHAPTER LXII.
HOW TO LIVE TO BE A HUNDRED. The End. Across the Continent Ezra Meeker, the famous transcontinental tourist, chooses because of its recognized long-touring ability, easy riding qualities and sound mechanical construction. The Miles Make No Difference It makes no difference how far you travel in "Pathfinder the Great"—to the next county or across the continent—for its Pullman-like riding qualities do not leave you dog-tired at the day's end, and the motor purrs as contentedly at bedtime as when f
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